Playing Games: A College Bully Romance

by Candace Wondrak

  Chapter Twenty-Seven – Kelsey

  I had no idea what Levi thought he was doing, finding me, tapping on the glass and acting like he needed to talk to me. Bullshit. He’d said all he needed to say, and I’d said my peace. Couldn’t the dickbag just let me be done with him already? Why couldn’t he see that I was trying to move on from him?

  I didn’t need him dragging me down constantly. I didn’t need the drama he brought along, or his fucking baggage.

  Baggage. Hah. Right. Like what he did to Mel last year was simply baggage. No, it was so much more than that, and so much worse. What he did to my poor roommate was unforgivable. There were some mistakes you couldn’t take back, some things words couldn’t undo. I wasn’t going to be one of those girls who laid back and let the guy constantly fuck up, all the while loving him because I needed his body and his dick.

  No, thanks. Dicks were a dime a dozen, and so were nice bodies. There was absolutely nothing special about Levi.

  But if that was true, why did I feel something heavy in my chest as I pulled in my arm and rolled the window up? Why did I avoid my mom’s knowing gaze as she drove us away from SCC?

  My mom knew. She had to have known.

  Then again, she wasn’t the master at relationships I’d thought she was, with her and Dad divorcing.

  “You want to tell me what that was about?” Mom asked, glancing at me. Her two hands were on the wheel, her seat pulled up close to the wheel thanks to her short frame. Yeah, I inherited my height from my wonderful mother.

  “Not really,” I muttered, keeping my eyes on the road ahead of us.

  Mom was quiet for a few moments, but not for long. “Seemed like he really wanted to talk to you, Kelsey.”

  “He’s an asshole.” There. That should be enough to shut my mom up, right?

  “Is he? Or are you just trying to write him off?”

  Okay, at that I had to glare at her. “What are you talking about?”

  Mom let out a sigh. “I know you, honey. I’ve seen what you do. Anytime a boy gets too interested in you, you close him out. Remember when that poor boy came to our house with two dozen roses to ask you to homecoming?”

  That was freshman year in high school. Four years ago. Damn, I felt old. I couldn’t imagine how old I’d feel once I turned thirty, or forty, or any of the decades after that. But, to answer her question…yes, I remembered.

  Since my lips were sealed shut, my mom went on, “You laughed in his face, right after he offered you the roses. I was horrified for him.”

  Tom Bradley. I had no idea what gave the nerd the push to ask me to the dance—I always went solo, because it was more fun that way. There was no way in hell I’d go with him or any boy to a dance.

  “You aren’t nice to boys who like you,” Mom said. “You can be a bitch.”

  “Mom!”

  “It’s true. You can be. I don’t know where you get it from.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Mom, trust me, Levi is a dick.”

  “Levi, hmm?” Mom raised her eyebrows, suddenly so intrigued at his name. “What else do you know about Levi? He seemed handsome.”

  I knew this was Mom’s way of trying to see why I’d written Levi off, but I so didn’t want to talk about him. I spoke over her, “So how’s the divorce coming along?” Okay, yes, I was a bitch. Call me…well, call me a bitch, I guess.

  A bitch being bitchy, go figure. Shit like that never happened around here.

  Mom quieted, and that was that. No more talk about Levi. I’d sufficiently pissed her off enough to shut her up the entire ride home. A job well done to me. Let me just pat myself on the back here.

  Of course, since I brought it up, I thought about it a bit too much. What would happen once Mom and Dad separated? Would they live in separate places? Obviously. Who would get to keep the house—or would they sell it? Where would my stuff go? Would I have two holidays, or would I have to pick one and then alternate every other year? So many unknowns, so many questions. I didn’t like thinking about it.

  After roughly thirty minutes, Mom pulled us into the driveway. As I was getting out my backpack, throwing it over my shoulders, she said, “Your dad will home in a little over an hour. Are you going to stay to see him?”

  Considering the drive to Hillcrest was kind of long, no. No, I wasn’t going to waste any more time here than I had to. Just get the keys to the rust bucket, grab the shit from my mom that she took from the office, and be gone. Throw everything from my mind. Stop worrying.

  “No. I’m just grabbing the rust bucket’s keys,” I told her, stepping into the house. It smelled familiar still, but soon enough it wouldn’t. This place felt weird now; I couldn’t even imagine how strange it would be once only one of my parents lived here…if that’s what happened. “Did you bring home what I asked you to get?”

  Mom held in a sigh as she dug in her purse, pulling out a blank sheet of sticky nametags. Her office used them when they had visitors. Just plain white, with the lettering done in red: Hello, my Name is… Nothing too special, but it would suffice. I grabbed them from her, thanked her, and stuffed them into my backpack.

  “I’m out,” I said, heading toward the door. “See you Sunday.”

  Mom gave me a strained smile. “Have fun, and tell Ash I said hi.”

  Oh, if there was one thing I wouldn’t do, it was talk about my parents. Ash surely had enough drama to drown myself in for the weekend; I didn’t need to add onto the pile.

  Once I got in my car, my old, faithful rust bucket, I texted Ash to let her know I was on my way. I figured we’d get a late dinner once I got there. I even offered to pay, not that I had much in my bank account. Ash had even less, but I figured we could eat on campus after that and she’d take care of that, meal card and all.

  Behind the wheel, I was able to crank up some rock music and lose myself to the familiar beats. I hadn’t listened to much music while at SCC; for some reason, Mel didn’t strike me as the type to enjoy the kind of music I liked. You know, the kind you head-banged to, the kind that you could only understand half of the lyrics to.

  Though it was chilly outside, I rolled down the window. At least it wasn’t downpouring like it was a few days ago. I could handle this air, this chill. I stuck an arm out of the window, not caring that my long hair would get knots from being blown around. This weekend, I needed to not care about a single thing, be as carefree as humanly possible.

  It wasn’t impossible. It was very possible, and I would do my damnedest to hold myself to it. None of my drama, although I did promise Ash I’d tell her once I saw her. Stupid, stupid. Ah, well. I’d tell her a bit, but not everything.

  For some stupid reason, I figured she’d look at me differently if she knew everything that was going on.

  She wouldn’t. Ash wasn’t that kind of person. She didn’t judge you based on what you did or your family situation. She was a good person, deep down, when she really let herself go.

  The drive was over both too soon and not soon enough. I rocked out to as many tunes as I could, and I found her dorm building, pulling into its turnaround and waiting for her to come down.

  I tugged on my hoodie’s sleeves. This place was…the exact kind of place you pictured when you imagined a rich, hoity-toity campus full of snot-nose brats all grown up. New buildings, clean stones, buildings with fancy architecture and useless columns that were only there for appearances. Clean, white sidewalks and well-manicured grass.

  I could never go here. Nope. It was way too fancy for me. Kudos to Ash for sticking it up and going here, but me? Hell no. Even if I got a scholarship to this place, a free ride, I wouldn’t be able to cope. Plus, the guys around here just weren’t my style. Me and rich boys didn’t get along.

  Granted, I didn’t think I’d ever really spoken to a rich as fuck boy before, but you knew what I meant. There were bound to be some key socioeconomic differences between us. Then again, maybe I was just blowing it all out of proportion. Maybe that was me stereotyping the rich. If Ash could
do it on a daily basis, I could do it for a weekend.

  I was so focused on the war raging inside my head that I forgot to unlock the door. I nearly jerked out of my own skin when a tap bounced on the passenger side glass, and my stomach sank. Even though I was far away from SCC, a stupid part of me thought I’d look over and see Levi.

  A stupid, dumb, ridiculous part of me.

  It wasn’t Levi.

  It was Ash.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight – Kelsey

  “I know I’m not a hugger, and neither are you,” I said the moment Ash got in the car, after I finally unlocked it for her. Felt like I’d been saying that a lot lately. “But I don’t care. I missed you.” I threw my arms around her, hugging her tightly. Granted, it was a weird hug, since I had my seatbelt on and it restrained my movement, but still. It felt amazing to see her again.

  “I’ve missed you too,” Ash said, giving me a smile once I released her from the sudden hug.

  Ash looked like she hadn’t changed a bit. She wore her famous high tops, along with a shirt that had seen better days—and by that I meant holes. A bunch of holes. She was a skater, and she looked the part. Her grey eyes were warm with life, and I couldn’t help but feel my spirits be lifted just by being near her again.

  God, I really had missed this girl.

  “Still doing the pink, huh?” I asked, slowly pulling my car into the street. I saw a McDonald’s just off campus; we’d go there. Cheap and easy, plus I knew how much my friend loved her chicken nuggets.

  Ash reached for her hair—its natural color was so blonde it was near white. It fell just to her shoulders, shorter than my dark mess, but the last few inches of it were dyed a bubblegum pink. She’d started dying it like that the last few months of our senior year. I thought it looked cute, and I was jealous I couldn’t do anything like that with my hair without bleaching the shit out of it first.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I can make a tube of dye last for a while.”

  “That bastard’s hair still pink?” I’d helped her come up with a plan to get back at that Sawyer dick. He sounded like the worst of the worst. It took a very strange man to rock pink hair, and with everything Ash had told me about that dipshit, he was not one of them.

  Ash took her time in answering me, “Yeah. Shockingly pink.”

  I chuckled. Men. All of them were fucking idiots, no matter where you went apparently.

  When we arrived at the McDonald’s, I paid. Ash got her chicken nuggets, which didn’t surprise me at all. If there was one thing I knew about her, it was that she loved those little pieces of chicken. She was the type of person who watched those video clips where people found beaks and little chicken feet in their nuggets while eating the damn nuggets. She didn’t care what was in them; she just thought they tasted good.

  I’d pulled my knotted hair back into a messy bun; those hours of wind had made my head look like a bird’s nest, but I didn’t care.

  “So,” Ash began, glancing at me between her nuggets, “what’s going on?”

  “I think we should talk about you, first,” I shot back without thinking. Me going on and on about my problems…eh. It didn’t sound like a fun time.

  “There’s nothing to talk about.” She didn’t sound too convincing. It was almost like she was purposefully keeping me in the dark, kind of like what I was doing to her. Maybe we had grown apart…

  I didn’t want to think about it.

  “Fuck off, of course there is. You’re going to a rich, preppy school with rich, preppy boys. Tell me all the details, girl, because I know once we get back to that room, you’re going to be tight-lipped. You never did send me a picture of your roommate shirtless.” I tried my best to act stern, like I wanted all the details. And I did. Details would be nice right about now.

  “Never got the chance.” Ash was tight-lipped, and it was ticking me off, a bit.

  “Hmm. I guess I’ll see for myself once I meet him, huh?” I paused for a while, munching on my burger. It wasn’t the best burger I’d ever had, but it was better than a lot of the food available on SCC’s campus. A sad day when McDonald’s was better. “And how did your pink revenge go on that other one? Uh, what was his name…” I knew his name; I was just playing dumb, hoping she’d bite.

  And she did. We talked for a little bit about Sawyer, how stupid he was.

  “The boob probably doesn’t know the difference between temporary and permanent dye,” Ash muttered, shrugging. Her thinness reminded me of Mel, but even Ash—who I’d always thought was skin and bones—had a few more pounds on Mel. “But I don’t want to talk about him. I know what you’re trying to do, and it isn’t going to work.”

  I blinked, as innocent as I could possibly be. “What? Using my charm to deflect the situation and turn it around on you? That’s not working?”

  “Not at all. Tell me what’s going on. You always ask how Hillcrest is going, but you never tell me how it’s going for you.” Ash was blunt, something she’d always been. “Having trouble with your classes?”

  Suddenly I’d lost all my appetite. “No.”

  “Your roommate?”

  “No, she’s fine.” Fine was kind of an exaggeration with Mel, but oh well.

  “Then what is it?” Ash tilted her head, studying me. Her blonde and pink hair fell in her face, her eyes narrowing. “Don’t tell me you’re having boy troubles. You never have boy troubles—you’re always the one giving the boys trouble.”

  Me giving the boys trouble. Now that was a heaping helping of truth, but here and now? It was the furthest from the truth a statement could possibly be.

  I rolled my eyes, muttering, “Boy troubles. You sound like my mom. But…yeah. I’m having boy troubles. One boy, specifically—although I think anyone would argue he’s more of a man…” I bit my lip as I thought of Levi, his blue eyes, how they came to life when I called him Blue.

  God, I missed those times. Was that wrong of me?

  “Okay,” Ash spoke slowly, “so you’re having man troubles.”

  Suddenly my mouth took on a mind of its own, and I blabbered away, “I like a guy, I think, but he’s kind of a dick.” Dick was an understatement. He was a whole big bag of dicks all rolled into one. “He’s so sexy, though. Like damn, the sexiest man I’ve ever laid eyes on. So hot you could lick chocolate off him and not worry about how disgusting that is.” I sighed as I shoved my hands into my hoodie pocket.

  “You think you like him?”

  I thought on her words. Ash, my good friend, saw right through me. There was no point trying to lie here, and as much as I hated to admit it…I sort of did, in spite of everything. “Yeah, either that, or I hate him. At this point, I don’t know which one.”

  Ash’s lips quirked into a smile. “So you needed some time away.”

  “And I needed to visit an old friend.” Yeah, time away from Levi and visiting an old friend. That wasn’t weird, was it? Me hoping to lose myself this weekend wasn’t wrong, was it? It wasn’t like Levi and I were together. We weren’t. It wasn’t wrong if I hooked up with a guy.

  Was it? Clearly, I’d lost my moral compass some time ago and had been unable to find it ever since.

  “I really do miss you,” I said, meaning it. “It’s not the same without you. Things have definitely changed since high school.” I grew quiet, hating how mushy-gushy I sounded. If there was one thing I wasn’t, it was mushy-gushy. “How is it going with you? I don’t mean the thing with those guys, but…everything else?”

  “Everything’s fine,” Ash said, and I could tell she was lying. Nothing was fine. Whatever was going on in her life was nagging at her, too.

  Still, if she was going to lie, so was I. I picked up enthusiasm, saying, “Great, then we can go out and party like the old days.”

  Once we finished up eating, we cleaned up and headed out to my car. On the drive back to the dorm—or, well, the parking lot where I’d have to park the rust bucket all weekend—I told Ash about our costumes. And by costumes, I meant the two nametags
I’d brought.

  Ash held up the Hello, my Name is… nametags, her grey eyes wide.

  “This is our costume?” She sounded absolutely incredulous, which made me smile. “Stickers. We’re going to wear stickers? You know any party around here is going to have tons of rich kids in costumes that cost more to insure than this car?”

  Hey, I never said my costume idea would go toe-to-toe with these rich boys’ costumes…which was why we were going to Stanton.

  I bolstered up my confidence, pretending to act like the old me, flashing Ash a wide smile. “Oh, yeah, I’m betting on it. I’m hoping to find someone with at least a decent sense of humor. A man has to make me laugh before taking me to pound-town.”

  Ash just about died laughing at me, which made me feel…strange. I didn’t like hiding things from her.

  Maybe this weekend wouldn’t be as fun as I wanted it to be.

  I went on, “I’m all for getting us equal dick, but I think you should be my wingwoman first—”

  Ash cut in, interrupting me, “I’ll be your wingwoman, but I…let’s just make it about you, okay? I don’t need any.” Kind of sounded like she was making excuses, like her life already had enough dick in it, which I supposed it did. She was going to an all-male university, for goodness sakes.

  I had to park the rust bucket in the commuter parking lot, and I tossed my bag over my shoulder. Ash and I walked to her dorm, and all the while I couldn’t help but be in awe of the campus around me.

  Every single building was new. There was not a single old-looking place around. Everything around here screamed rich, and I felt so unbelievably out of place. Even her dorm building was fancy. Marble floors, stainless steel elevators that looked shiny and new. My skin itched just being here. How did Ash put up with it?

  Ash stopped us once we were in front of her dorm room, inserting her key before pushing in. We walked in at the right time—just in time to see her roommate running a hand through his damp hair, stretching his shirt taut over his lean body.